


Soul Stone

by kuiske



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, fëanor is accidentally almost happy, idealized dead mother, pre fëanor/nerdanel relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:18:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9036770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuiske/pseuds/kuiske
Summary: Fëanor returns from his coming-of-age party miserable, when one last surprise gift changes his day for the better.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for calendille on tumblr for the Tolkien Secret Santa gift exchange - I know you requested happy Fëanor, but my brain shorted out a little at the concept and the best I could manage was sort of bittersweet. I hope you like it anyway!

Fëanor hurled his empty wine goblet at the wall of his drawing room. The priceless crystal shattered against equally priceless gold-streaked marble, and although the small act of destruction utterly failed to make him feel better his fingers itched for want of finding something else to break. He wished he could have screamed in frustration but his quarters weren’t quite secluded enough to make sure that he wouldn’t have been heard, and a number of party guests had opted to stay in the palace guest rooms, too drunk to risk even the remarkably safe streets of Tirion.

 _His_ guests for _his_ party, yet the Void could’ve swallowed the lot of them and he wouldn't have cared.

A hundred years since his begetting. He was an adult now, in law as well as in skill. 

All the nobility of Noldor had amassed to the palace to celebrate their Crown Prince’s coming of age, if not for his sake then for the sake of their King and the lavish feast he had arranged.

All the nobility of Noldor had showered him with exquisite gifts - some of which he had even liked - though he was sure it was mostly because it was important for them to be seen doing so.

All the nobility of Noldor had done an excellent job of never once mentioning his Mother, as if she had never existed and his Father had begat him on nothing but air.

Curse them all.

“My Prince?” a servant whose arrival he had not heard spoke to him. “Pardon my intrusion, but the lady Nerdanel instructed that this should be delivered to you in your quarters and in person.”

The servant held out a small, simple marble box and Fëanor gestured at him to put in on a nearby side table before dismissing him curtly. He knew he was being less than polite, but he also knew he was less than pleasant company right now and that the servant probably appreciated being given permission to leave more than any forced courtesy. The way he had very pointedly _not_ been looking at the goblet Fëanor had smashed spoke louder than the disappointed reproach some of the elder servants might’ve voiced aloud when he had still been a child.

He considered leaving the gift where it was and taking out his frustration and anger on grammar before deciding what to do with it - irregular verbs were even better than smithwork at helping him take his mind off things - but in the end his curiosity won out. He _had_ received a gift from Mahtan’s household, and although he liked Nerdanel well enough he was by no means so close to his teacher’s daughter that it would've required a personal present from her. 

Fëanor grabbed the box and flopped down onto an armchair facing the large windows to study the gift like a puzzle he could solve if he only put enough of his mind into it. 

He slid his fingers along the box’s smooth stone surface. The lack of ornamentation was enough to make it stand out among his other possessions, and coming from a Master sculptor it had to be a conscious choice, but he couldn’t determine a reason for it. If she had intended it as a slight it would’ve made sense for her to give it to him in front of the other guests where he could not refuse it without causing a scene, so he was tentatively optimistic that that was not the case. Unless she wanted to insult him more subtly where her Father couldn’t see, but even he had hard time believing that. Fëanor wasn’t sure what he could possibly have done to antagonise her into a display of open hostility, considering that she refused to reply in kind even to the courtiers who all but said to her face that she was called ‘the Wise’ merely for the lack of anything positive to be said about her looks. But then, one never knew.

By the light of the first stars, but he _hated_ politics.

With an irritated sigh he glanced around to make sure he truly was alone now. Then he lifted off the lid and looked inside the box.

It was a good thing he was sitting down with the gift in his lap, because otherwise he might have dropped it out of sheer shock. 

The gift was not a slight.

It was a kindness such as no one else in his life had bothered with.

With trembling hands Fëanor picked up a statue depicting his Mother from it’s resting place on a fine velvet cushion.

He had known Nerdanel’s sculptures were so lifelike that they could very well be mistaken for being alive, but he had never understood it as well as now. This Míriel stood no taller than his hand, but she stood there nevertheless, smiling ever so slightly at her son, and she was more alive than he had ever seen her before. 

(He had only seen his Mother deep in lifeless slumber in the gardens of Lórien. Not dead though; never, ever dead! No matter what anyone said.) 

Fëanor felt like his heart was breaking and his eyes blurred with tears, yet he couldn’t seem to stop smiling. He caressed the individually carved fine hair gently with a single finger and felt absurdly grateful that the statue did not have a base. Her feet were not bound to a slab of stone, she stood on her own and she could move if she wanted to.

(And the very small child who still lived somewhere inside him, the child who still waited for his Mother to rise from her sleep and come back to him almost believed that too.)

The translucent white-grey stone flashed blue as he turned the statue in his hands. He recognised it; it was a gemstone the Teleri favoured for jewellery and called the Soul Stone. Fëanor could’ve told them that the gem was a type of feldspar and had no soul, no stone did, not _yet_ at least - an odd choice for a sculpture now that he thought of it, but he could appreciate the symbolism. And it wasn’t like the name was likely to come around to irritate him often, since he preferred to work on diamonds and other hard gems which he could cut out to perfect crystals to catch and reflect the light of the Trees. 

Suddenly he laughed out loud, startling even himself. The Soul Stone was not peculiar for a sculpture at all. It had simply not occurred to him before that one could carve a face to a gemstone like one could to a slab of marble, since ‘soft’ was not what he thought of when he thought of gems. He felt foolish for his oversight, which did not happen often. Fëanor felt _made fool out of_ often enough, and slighted and mocked, but very rarely foolish. It was even rarer that it barely bothered him at all. He was sure the moment would pass, and quickly, but being proven wrong didn’t matter to him much right now that he could see Míriel’s smile.

Very reluctantly Fëanor placed the statue on a table, but he did not turn away. He could not. Neither could he put it back into the box - he would _not_ hide his Mother out of sight! - but his stomach lurched uncomfortably at the thought of leaving it on the table without protection. 

A vitrine should do it. Polished rock crystal, chased with gold- No! 

Míriel’s hair was silver grey. The statue was white and grey and pale blue, bathed now in the bright silver light of the high noon of Telperion. 

Nothing coloured gold should come near her.

Fëanor’s thought went to Nerdanel, whose hand had fashioned his Mother's likeness into an almost-life from out of bare stone. His heart filled with fondness as great or greater as he had ever felt in his life and his smile widened.

He had no objections to autumn red.

A gold-copper alloy would do just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I like to headcanon Nerdanel as significantly older than Fëanor, which is how she knows what Míriel looked like.
> 
> \- The Soul Stone is actually Moonstone, if you want to look it up. I had to come up for a new name for it because the Moon does not yet exist at this point of canon...


End file.
